Book Review-Hot-Pies-on-the-Tram-Car

Hot Pies on the Tram Car

by

Sheila Newberry

*****

I commenced the audio version of Hot Pies on the Tram Car with reasonably positive expectations.   However, my expectations were squashed beyond repair I am afraid.

I found it difficult to concentrate on driving and following this book’s convoluted plot.  Therefore, it may be a better read than audio.  At least when I read a book I can interpret characters the way I see them.

Hot Pies on the Tram Car was set in the 1920s between World War I and the Great Depression approached.

Living above the family pie shop, Florence is renowned for the pies she makes and she is always ready to help her house full of family and friends.

Because Hot Pies on the Tram Car was at least the third ‘period’ novel, this year, it may well be my last for a while.

I have rated

Hot Pies on the Tram Car

as a

audiobook at best.

***

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

Hot Pies on the Tram Car

an average of 3.96 stars

from 179ratings

and 17 reviews.

***

Hot Pies on the Tram Car

can be purchased online at 

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

Book-Review-The-Mother

THE MOTHER

by

Jane Caro

 

My first of Jane Caro’s offerings and hopefully there is more to come.

Miram Duffy is the matriarch of this family.  Fiona is her eldest daughter, married with a daughter of her own.   Slightly on the wilder side is Alison (Ally) who has just married (Nick) after previously dating several men that Miriam did not approve of….not that Miriam uttered as much to Ally.  Nick turns out not to be the gentleman that Miriam thinks he is.

The mother/daughter relationship Miriam expected is non-existent as Ally and Nick find excuses not to visit or not to have visitors.  However, when grandson Teddy came along he was several months old before Alison and Nick asked Miriam to visit and that invitation only came about after Nick phoned Miriam about Ally’s mental health.   Miriam was told the house was a mess and it was anything but, a mess. Miriam also notes how tense Ally is when Nick is around.  Ally eventually reveals, to Miriam, that she is pregnant again; pregnant within two months of giving birth.   Little by little, Miriam discovers that Ally is leading a nightmare of an existence and not long after Isla arrives, Ally with encouragement from the mental health nurse leaves Nick and arrives at the family home much to Miriam’s delight.

Life goes downhill very quickly from here on.  Miriam and Ally discover how ineffective Apprehended Violence Orders really are, and five years on Miriam does the unthinkable to protect her daughter and grandchildren.

 

I rated

The Mother

as a four-star read

***

  At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers have awarded

The Mother

an average of 4.08 stars,

from 1,366 ratings

and 183 reviews.

***

The Mother

Can be purchased online at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

 

Book-Review-The-Dressmakers-of-Yarrandarrah-Prison

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison

by

Meredith Jaffe

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison by Meredith Jaffe is a wonderful read telling the story of a group of prisoners who decide to make a wedding dress for the daughter (Debbie) of one of their own.

Derek has been sentenced for skimming around $750,000 from his local golf club’s revenue.  To help keep his sanity Derek has joined a weekly sewing class, run by Jane.

Derek has served five years of his sentence without any contact from his wife or daughter.   During that time he has written a weekly letter to Debbie and never received a reply of any sort.   It is only through a visit from sister-in-law Sharon that he becomes aware that Debbie is to soon be married.

Whilst my personal prison experience is limited to teaching computer skills to inmates of a maximum-security prison for six years, I am fairly certain that I had all of the Yarrandarrah sewing class members in my class at one time or another which further emphasises how well the author researched The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison.

I have rated

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison

as an enjoyable

five-star read.

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers have awarded

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison

an average of 3.92 stars,

from 1,352 ratings

and 212 reviews.

The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison

can be purchased online at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

Book Review-Nowhere-Else

 

Nowhere Else

by

Fiona McCallum

(Goodreads Author)

 

Fiona McCallum’s Nowhere Else was inspired by a plane crash in the waters of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.  However, apart from using that crash as inspiration only. Everything else is a work of fiction.

Nowhere Else tells the story of Gold Walkley Award Winner, Nicola Harvey as she sorts out her life in the afterglow of her award-winning accomplishments, namely her Walkley and Gold Walkley for her story about the aforementioned plane crash that killed her adoptive parents.

Shortly after her win, her boss sends her to Nowhere Else, a small inland town, in South Australia to write a story about the ongoing drought.   The negatives of Nowhere Else are poor mobile phone and internet service and no five-star accommodation.  While the positives are friendly people and most all know Nicola’s name on her first day thanks to the bush telegraph.

While in Nowhere Else Nicola takes stock of Adelaide her love life and accidentally finds new love in Nowhere Else.

A letter arrives advising her who her biological parents are and they were once Nowhere Else residents.  Could they still live in or around Nowhere Else?

I listened to the audio version of Nowhere Else and found it thoroughly enjoyable.  It was a reasonably well-paced story that took no effort to identify the main characters, so as usual, kudos must be awarded to the narrator, Jennifer Vuletic, for an excellent narration of Nowhere Else.

***

I rated

Nowhere Else

as a

Four Star audiobook.

*** 

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers

had awarded

Nowhere Else

an average

of 3.72 stars,

from 494 ratings

and 55 reviews.

***

Nowhere Else

can be purchased online

at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

Book Review-Teach-Me-Wolf-#3

Teach Me

(The Wolf Hotel #3)

by

Nina West

aka – K. A. Tucker

        
Teach Me (Wolf Hotels #3), by Nina West, continues after Abbi’s father has had a farming accident.   Leaving her job at Wolf Cove to fly home to Pennsylvania, she has resigned herself to spending the next twenty hours on planes or in airports.  Arriving in Homer she steps off the ferry and immediately finds she is being offered a ride to the airport.  Not the airport she was destined for, but a private airport.  The Wolf Airport.

Once home Abbi again has to face her mother’s wrath, conveniently overlooking all the good Henri had done for the Mitchell family in their time of need.   Mother Mitchell (Bernadette) only had eyes for Jed as a life partner for Abbi, not caring that Abbi and Jed had split because Jed cheated on Abbi.

By this stage, the editing was beginning to annoy me.  Simple words were being left out of the text left right and centre.

For example; straight from the text this sentence reads;

“I smile as reach up to unfasten the top button of my dress.”

Whereas I think either of these alternatives reads much better and makes more sense:

“I smile as (I) reach up to unfasten the top button of my dress.”

“I smile (and) reach up to unfasten the top button of my dress.”

I have one final question to put to the panel;

‘How did Henri acquire rough, calloused, hands?’

There are several references to his calloused hands, however, the only times I have ever seen callous hands was after heavy manual labour and I have chopped enough wood in my life to know that he did not get callouses from the bit he chopped up in book one.

Teach Me moves along at a good pace, however, there were many times when I felt that there could have been a bit more to the plot other than lengthy descriptions of Abbi’s and Henri’s ‘bedroom’ antics.

I have rated

Teach Me

as a three-star read.

At the time of completing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

Teach Me

an average of 4.13 stars

from 6,352 ratings

and 399 reviews.

Teach Me

can be purchased online at

Amazon‎,

Booktopia, and Fishpond

 

 

 

Book Review-Break-Me-Wolfe-#2

Break Me

(The Wolf Hotel #2)

by 

 

Nina West

Break Me (Wolf Hotels #2) virtually commences the day after Nina West’s Tempt Me ends.  Abbi continues with her duties as Henry Wolf’s personal assistant leading up to the opening of the Wolf Cove Hotel, a new addition to the Wolf Chain of Hotels.  An opening where many of the guests are gorgeous and drooling after Henry.  This coupled with Henry’s brother Scott and his lies all create a perfect storm to fuel Abbi’s insecurities and she becomes insanely jealous.  Particularly, after Abbi, sees Henry escorting not one, but two lovely ladies back to their accommodation.  

After the opening and after a predictable argument, Henry cuts his summer short and leaves Alaska, but not before he has transferred Abbi to her first preference; the outdoor crew.  There she reconnects with Ronan and Connor, her workmates for the rest of the summer.

 

It appears all is over between Abbi and Henry until Abbi receives a phone call from home that turns her world upside down.  And that is where Henry, and his resources, step in to ease her pain.

 

Break Me moves along at a good pace, however, there were many times when I felt that there could have been a bit more to the plot than the characters portrayed.

 

******

Other Goodreads readers

have rated

Break Me

an average of 4.12 stars

from 5,057 ratings

and 398 reviews.

***

I think

Break Me

is a

read.

Break Me

can be purchased online at

Amazon

 

Not Available: Booktopia, Fishpond 

 

Book Review-Girl-With-No-Home

The Girl With No Home

by

Sheila Newberry

*****

The Girl With No Home is set in two locations; London 1888 and Kent 1904, and is basically the life story of young, and not so young, Jerusha Carey after she is abandoned by her mother at the age of 7.

After spending time in several foster settings, at age eighteen she meets and marries Dan Applebee who is much older and a reliable farmer from Kent.  Together they commence the quiet secure life she always desired,  with the exception of children.  Then tragedy strikes, leaving Jerusha alone with a farm to manage.

Two years after Dan’s death, Joe Finch arrives on the scene seeking some farm work and a home for his ten-year-old daughter.  It appears that Joe is what Jerusha needs, both as a farmworker and partner.  However, Joe has always been a wanderer and wasn’t home for his daughter’s birth and true to form he repeats the cycle when Jerusha falls pregnant.  Joe leaves for Canada, and work, leaving Jerusha and his daughter all alone to fend for themselves.

Life is made much harder for Jerusha after she delivers a handicapped baby courtesy of a case of rubella during her pregnancy.

Although a bit slow and difficult to follow in places,

I have rated

The Girl With No Home

as a

read.

***

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

The Girl With No Home

an average of 4.16 stars

from 494 ratings

and 18 reviews.

***

The Girl With No Home

can be purchased online at 

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

Book Review-Making-Peace

 

Making Peace 

(Finding Hannah  #2)

by

Fiona McCallum

(Goodreads Author)

Making Peace is the story of Hannah and her group of friends and their support for each other.  As the story begins, it is just over twelve months after her parents and her husband were killed in a car crash.

 

Hannah has not been following the court case against the company that owned the truck which killed her family; however, she decides to visit the courthouse one day to see what is going on.   At the Courthouse, Hannah meets the driver of the truck that killed her parents and husband.  The driver has been exonerated of any blame for the accident. 

 

While Hannah has moved on with her life surrounded by her small group of friends, Peace, the truck driver, is still in the depths of despair.  Hannah decides to help Peace and his family in any way she can.   Some of her friends and acquaintances think Hannah’s attitude is quite odd until she points outs that nothing will return her loved ones. Therefore forgiveness is the best course of action.

I listened to the audio version of Making Peace and found it thoroughly enjoyable.  It was a reasonably well-paced story that took no effort to identify the mostly female main characters, so as usual, kudos must be awarded to the narrator, Miranda Nation, for an excellent narration of Making Peace.

 I have rated 

Making Peace

a solid

Four Star audiobook.

****

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers

had awarded

Making Peace

an average of 

3.77 stars

from 397 ratings

and 49 reviews 

****

Making Peace

can be purchased online at 

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

Book-Review-The-Girl-Across-The-Sea

The Girl Across The Sea

Noelle Harrison

 

The Girl Across The Sea was my first read by Noelle Harrison.  I’m sure it will not be my last.

The Girl Across The Sea is told in then and now chapters and follows the life of seventeen-year-old Ellen, who leaves Ireland for America, in 1925, meets someone during the four-day crossing and is married four weeks after arriving in New York

For unknown reasons Ellen does not want to return to Ireland, so when her husband gets a job in Ireland eight years and one daughter later, Ellen abandons daughter Brigid and her husband leaving them to sail to Ireland alone.

Ellen’s life in America is interesting and varied, to say the least.  She constantly thinks of Brigid, but not so of her husband Giles.  By the time Ellen reaches her mid-seventies she has been married to Jack for over fifty years and has lived with him in a house, he built on the West Coast of Canada’s Victoria Island for the same amount of time.

Brigid’s story begins when she is almost on her death bed.  Brigid has one daughter, Mairead, and a granddaughter, Stella.  Brigid and Mairead have never had a great Mother/Daughter relationship. However, all seems to be resolved during the last few weeks of her life.  On her deathbed, Brigid asks Mairead to find her mother, Ellen; to which Mairead agrees.

I think The Girl Across The Sea would make a good mini-series or movie.

 

***

I rated

The Girl Across The Sea

as a

four-star audiobook

 

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

The Girl Across The Sea

an average of 4.45 stars

from 184 ratings

 and 18 reviews

****

The Girl Across The Sea

can be purchased online at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

                                                                                                           

 

Book-Review-Dark-Side-of-the-Harbour

Dark Side of the Harbour

by

Jennifer Bacia

 

Dark Side of the Harbour is the story of Rose and Margot who befriend each other while working at David Jones in Sydney’s Central Business District.  Rose is the reserved country girl while Margot is more worldly.  Their friendship eventually leads them to share a flat.

A nearby coffee bar proves to be the ideal place to meet two Polish immigrants.  As their friendship grows Stefan and Josef open the women’s eyes to the harsh reality of the Second World War.  Rose and Stefan’s romance is hindered by lingering War traumas and Margot wants more than a penniless Polish immigrant for a life partner.

More than two decades pass before an aspiring journalist lands herself a job with an investigative current affairs show.  Her first story is to investigate, if possible, a cold case that was solved with the flimsiest of evidence and very little investigation by the police.  The new investigation has locals and police alike on edge, while still others who have remained silent for so long, at last, tell their side of the story

The Dark Side of the Harbour may possibly have been a better read than the audio version to which I listened.

However, as the sixties were my teen years I found Dark Side of the Harbour an interesting and enjoyable story and I hope to read more of Ms Bacia’s works this year.

 

 

I rated

Dark Side of the Harbour

as a

three-star audiobook

 

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

Dark Side of the Harbour

an average of 4.28 stars

from 32 ratings

 and 7 reviews

****

Dark Side of the Harbour

can be purchased online at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

                                                                                                           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rated

Dark Side of the Harbour

 

as a

three-star audiobook

 

At the time of writing my review

other Goodreads readers had awarded

Dark Side of the Harbour

an average of 4.28 stars

from 32 ratings

 and 7 reviews

***

Dark Side of the Harbour

can be purchased online at

Booktopia, Fishpond and Amazon

                                                                                                           

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